New-Wave
(Becky Jones)
Context
This profile is intended to be read after the Masters of Disaster team profile.
Which explains all the background.
“New Wave” was a vague name for early 1980s styles of pop music. It was sort of post-punk, but usually the word conflated bands doing pretty different things.
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Background
- Real Name: Rebecca Jones.
- Known Relatives: Wendy (aka Windfall, sister, deceased), unnamed mother (deceased). Windfall’s clone might be considered a relative.
- Group Affiliation: Masters of Disaster.
- Base of Operations: Mobile.
- Height: 5’8″ (1.72m). Weight: 130 lbs. (59 Kg.).
- Eyes: Blue. Hair: Light blue. Skin: Alabaster.
Powers and Abilities
New-Wave can turn into a large mass of animated water. She can still talk and perceive as a liquid.
Applications include :
- Ignoring common physical attacks, since she’s a liquid 🌊.
- Existing underwater without hindrance, and “swimming” at speed.
- Hitting multiple opponents as a huge wave.
- Displacing masses of water at speed. She sometimes uses this as transportation for her team. And she once produced a city-damaging tidal wave.
- Turning into water vapour. In fog form, she can fly.
- Turning into acid. This will dissolve the less resilient kinds of stone and metal.
- Shooting high-pressure jets of water from her hands.
- Looking innocuous by cunningly impersonating a puddle.
- Killing people by shoving water into their respiratory system.
Other assets
She also seems able to modify her humanoid appearance a bit. Usually to give herself gravity-defying hair and curves. And you can’t pull her down.
New-Wave is unhinged and murderous. This explosive temper contributes to her threat level.
Furthermore, she doesn’t afraid of nothing. She gets angry instead.
She’s an experienced, cautious criminal and mercenary. Her smarts and power of observation are robust.
Limitations
New-Wave can control her body even if it has been split into separate masses. But this requires extended concentration. Katana (Yamashiro Tatsu) once bought time by trapping part of New-Wave’s water into her empty glove.
Being mixed with soil and thus turned into mud deprives Jones of her powers until she can separate the two. This apparently takes hours.
She was also taken out when her water was combined with magnesium, with explosive results.
Her non-standard physiology doesn’t allow her to get pregnant. She might have other medical peculiarities due to this. There’s one vague implication of chronic health issues.
Past 2006, she looked like she had been through lengthy chemotherapy, and her eyes may have been damaged.
Tech ?
One stray remark implies that New-Wave built cloning facilities based on notes from Madame Ovary. She might thus have tech skills.
There just isn’t enough material to interpret this. I suspect this was just poor wording.
History
According to Rebecca Jones, her mother let her employer run a prenatal DNA experiment on her. Similar experiments were later carried out on her sister Wendy. This is what endowed them with their powers.
Becky Jones eventually murdered her mother in retaliation. She then ran away with her kid sister in tow.
Jones likely was the one who founded the Masters of Disaster, perhaps in the early 1980s.
After that, see the team profile.
Description
Beyond enhancing her hairstyles and physique, New-Wave sometimes makes her eyes red (or rather, a dark magenta).
Starting in 2006, New Wave lost her hair and started wearing a bandanna over her eyes. As if to hide part of her face.
This may correspond to medical problems. Or this may be a fashion statement. Or it may be a reaction to what happened to her sister.
Adνеrtisеmеnt
Personality
New-Wave is a cruel, arrogant, murderous psychopath. She hates being questioned, getting frustrated, or looking bad.
She’s overprotective of her sister (including against Shakedown’s advances), and keeps riding her hard in order to toughen her up. She’ll routinely threaten her.
She has on occasion tried to kill Wendy, though it’s unclear whether she’d actually do it.
After the Clone!Windfall plot, Rebecca Jones apparently walked out of Wendy’s life and left her alone.
New-Wave hates it when Wendy calls her Becky. She wants to only be called New-Wave.
Other traits
Violence and threats are her native language, and she runs the Masters like a dictator.
She sometimes does water-based puns. Which all manage to sound menacing and sinister.
New-Wave particularly hates Halo, who resembles her late mother.
Windfall once implied that New-Wave was doing drugs. But it was ambiguous. She may have meant medical drugs rather than narcotics.
Quotes
“I’m not into punk, gentlemen. Punk is dead. I’m New-Wave.”
“Hello, Black Lightning. Long time, no sea. Ha ha ha !”
“Easy, boys. Shakedown here has just given you a free sample of why we’re called the Masters of Disaster. And I guarantee you won’t want any more !”
“The only way anyone leaves me is in a pine box !”
“There’s *always* time for a little *payback* !”
“You know, I’m not getting paid enough to deal with this crap. We were hired to disrupt the city, not to take part in someone’s stupid-ass war. Time to put an end to this, Masters of Disaster style !” (crashes a tidal wave ‘pon Markovia).
2010 appearance.
DC Heroes RPG
Tell me more about the game stats
New-Wave
| Dex: 07 | Str: 03 | Bod: 05 |
| Int: 05 | Wil: 04 | Min: 04 |
| Inf: 06 | Aur: 04 | Spi: 05 |
| Init: 018 | HP: 045 |
Powers:
Acid: 07, Self-Link (Fog): 03, Flight: 03, Growth: 05, Self-Link (Water control): 05, Shrinking: 05, Skin armour: 05, Swimming: 07, Water blast: 03, Water freedom*: 07
Bonuses and Limitations:
- All Powers are Contingent Upon Self-Link (Water Control).
- Acid has No Range, and is Minimal Marginal.
- Acid can be Combined With, and Active Throughout, the Fog.
- Growth doesn’t add the STR per se, but rather to the EV of Water Control for waves, drowning and moving masses of water. The APs are also sufficient for the Sweep Attack Growth bonus.
- Skin Armour applies against most Physical and Energy attacks, including heat. But not cold, electrolysis and other attacks that should affect a large mass of water.
Skills:
Charisma (interrogation): 05, Thief (Stealth): 05
Advantages:
Iron nerves, Leadership.
Connections:
Underworld (Low).
Drawbacks:
- Creepy Appearance.
- Dependent (Windfall, 0 pts).
- Power Loss (DEX and Thief both drop to 03 if she can’t use Self-Link (Water Control)).
- Power Loss (all Powers for two Phases if her body mass is separated).
- Power Loss (all Powers for hours if mixed to become a non-liquid substance such as mud).
- Minor Rage.
Motivation:
Psycho.
Occupation:
Leader of the MoD.
Wealth:
004
Design Notes
Another case where Fluid Form doesn’t *quite* model a fluid character. Especially since the applications must be at different AP levels to model what’s published.
Therefore I went for an effect-based approach, though Water control does most of the heavy lifting. And it looks more interesting that way than what I assumed. I wasn’t expecting the Growth and Shrink.
Water Freedom denotes that she can stay submerged until the sea cows come home. Linking it is an aesthetic choice. Water Freedom: 01 would be better value, but it looks cheesy and she’s not created on a budget.
Much of the stats block is inherited from Mayfair. It maybe a bit higher than what I would have spontaneously given her, but it reflects the material.
Design notes, gushing forth
New-Wave tends to spend about half her Hero Points in a tactical, shrewd way. The rest will come into play if she has a fit of anger. Whether that occurs during any given story is random.
Which Physical and Energy attacks hurt New-Wave isn’t quite coherent. Her having a RV of 10 and a BODY of 05 sounds about right to reproduce this randomness in-game.
She could arguably have Military Science (Camouflage) in water form. But I think that’d be overkill.
Design notes, flowing like water
By maxing out her Growth: 05 and Self-Link (Water Freedom): 05 EV to 10 each, she has 20 APs to displace water. If she manages to displace 20 APs, that’s 25,000 tons. Playing it safe (target number 7) is 15 APs, which is 450 tons. That’s a 11-foot tall, 20-feet long wave (3⅓ * 6 metres) .
(Since she’s targeting an inert mass, she can use her boosted EV as both AV and EV. Think of it as using STR/STR rather than DEX/STR to attack a wall.)
This models the large-scale feats she does in Joker’s Last Laugh or when flash-flooding the Markovian capital.
(This is clearly a hack and exploit. It’s not something I’d allow for a Player Character. But while that wasn’t the intent, this setup can replicate those feats of hers that exceed her normal power level.)
The low APs for Water Blast represent her seeming inability to engage flying opponents. We do see her using powerful water blasts at close range on another occasion. But mechanically, that one can be covered by Self-Link (Water Animation) doing the wave attack, just with different visuals.
(In fact it works better as Water Control, since in the clearest example she was hitting two targets.)
Source of Character: DC Universe.
Helper(s): mykey3000.com (now cosmicteams ), Michael Andrew, Darci, Mayfair Games stats.
Writeup revised on the 10th of December, 2019.